Buckets of Rain

By Annie Pearl Brantley

The rain fell and fell and fell, day after day. Buckets of rain. Torrents of rain. The ditches overflowed. Mud holes turned into ponds; ponds into lakes; and lakes into seas.Chickens sought safety in the treetops while the mules, horses and cows slogged about in mud up to their knees. The wise humans stayed inside where it was dry.

Down at the family graveyard, the rising waters pushed at the saturated, sandy soil causing it to shift restlessly, in a series of miniature avalanches. Each little shift gave a tiny nudge until, finally, Alfred Lamm in his coffin slowly floated to the surface.

According to local legend, when the rain finally ended and the floating coffin was discovered, Alfred was moved into a nearby tobacco barn to dry out and was then reburied. So far as I know, he has rested peacefully since that time.

Alfred Lamm (b. 1850) was the son of Thomas and Aily Bizzard Lamm. He was marred in 1875 to Sarah Glover (1844-1911). I do not know his death date and there is no stone to mark his grave. The home place, which is in Nash County, about 5 miles north of Bailey and ½ mile east of Green Gables, was bought by T. C. High and in my memory was called the T. C. High home place.

[Annie Pearl Brantley (5/17/1929-2/21/2008) was a Nash County genealogist who lived in Spring Hope. This story was published in The Connector, newsletter of the Tar River Connections Genealogical Society in the Winter 1998 issue.]

Legend of the Whitaker House

By Mrs. Cora W Ramsaw and Mrs. Saratoga W. Brown 

G. F. C. Whitaker and his wife bought a farm from Will Brown. It was in Murfreesboro Township, Hertford County, about four miles beyond Mapleton. The farm was bordered on one side by Potecasi Creek and on the other side by the Meherrin River. Here the Whitakers built their home and established their family.

As time went on, Whitaker began looking for more and better farm land. As luck would have it, the Camp Manufacturing Co. was looking for timber and the Whitaker place had plenty of that. In 1930, Whitaker and Camp Manufacturing made a swap—the Whitaker place for what was known as Mis Sallie Warren's farm in Maney's Neck Township, Como, N. C.

Camp Manufacturing Co. had no use for the buildings on the Whitaker farm and G. F. C. Whitaker was given a year to tear down and remove all the buildings on the property. The Whitaker House was torn down and the materials were carried to the Meherrin River at the far end of the farm.

"The boards were put into a raft and floated down the river with Whitaker's top buggy on the raft in which he sat. His sons came along beside the raft in a canoe which he made, to see that the raft was guided to its destination, and tied up at the boat landing on the [new]Whitaker farm … ."

The salvaged building material was stored on the new site until the house was rebuilt in 1935.

The Whitaker family moved into the old/new house in January, 1936.

[This story by Mrs. Cora W Ramsaw and Mrs. Saratoga W. Brown, daughters of G. F. C. Whitaker, was first published in Heritage County Reflections in 1988. The book was compiled to commemorate America's 400th Anniversary.]

Working in Radio

BY J. T. (TOMMY) SNOWDEN, JR.

I first came to Nash County and Rocky Mount in 1938 to accept a position on the announcing and copy-writing staff of radio station WEED-AM. My salary was $22.50 per week.

WEED was the only radio station east of Raleigh in 1938. Avera Wynne was the owner and manager. On the staff when I arrived were: announcers Wally Williams, Carl McKinney, and Bernard Proctor. Ike Murphrey, a Rocky Mount native, and Roy Bechtol, from Pennsylvania, were our engineers. Our sales manager was B. W. Frank. Later, Ray Bandy and Jack Cummings worked in sales, as did I.

I spent my first week in Rocky Mount at the Cambridge Hotel on Main Street. My room was on the second floor front and the trains going by the front door of the hotel made sleeping difficult for the first two or three nights. I ate my meals at the Palace Restaurant, the New York Café, and the Royal Palm Restaurant.

After a week at the Cambridge Hotel, I secured a nice room with Mr. and Mrs. Jim Frank Avent on Forrest Hill Drive in Englewood, just two blocks from the studios of WEED. The room, including laundry, was $3 per week. I soon discovered Mrs. Sally Edwards' boarding house on Church Street, just across from the Masonic Temple. I took my meals with Mrs. Edwards. For $7 per week, I had lunch and dinner, seven days a week.

Radio WEED featured a lot of local, live talent on the air. Perhaps the best known at that time were Talmadge Pollard and Paul Byrd, "The Johnson County Ramblers," sponsored by Planters Cotton Oil and Fertilizer Co. The emcee for the show was "Uncle" Eddie Burwell. Other artists who performed during the early years were: Curley Red and his Melody Boys, Everette and Pearlie Ashley, the "Ashley Brothers," and Atwood Gurganus with brothers Julius and Irvin. Inez Cobb was one of our better singers and was featured on many programs. Lucille Arnold of Red Oak was our staff pianist and played for Inez and a number of other local entertainers that appeared at the station.

One of the most professional groups to appear on WEED was Tex Dean and the Carefree Cowboys, sponsored by Priddy Fertilizer. I wrote the commercials and announced the show for several years.

I met and married Martha High of Red Oak in 1941. We live in Greenville, North Carolina.

[This story was one of many collected through the Nash County Cultural Center's Oral History Project during the late 1990s. Braswell Memorial Library in Rocky Mount has the full collection of stories. This story was first published in The Connector, the newsletter of the Tar River Connections Genealogical Society in the Spring 1999 issue.]